Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to audio/video systems and more specifically to creating a tiled video display, and controlling the tiled video display.
Background Information
As time progresses, users in both home and commercial settings have access to increasing amounts of video content provided as video streams from a variety of video source devices. Through cable television boxes and satellite television receivers, users may access a huge variety of televisions channels. Through digital media receivers, users is may access an ever expanding number of individual programs and movies that are streamed over the Internet. Through Blueray™ and other disc players, users may access a massive collection of recorded video content. Still further video content may be obtained from surveillance cameras, video conferencing systems, computer systems, gaming systems, and the like. Given all this video content, it is not surprising that users often desire to browse multiple video streams from multiple video source devices simultaneously.
To address this issue, a variety of video processing systems have been developed that take video streams from different video source devices, and simultaneously display the video streams in windows shown on a screen of a display device. For example, a processing system may take 8 different video streams, and simultaneously display their video content in 8 video windows arranged in a matrix on the screen of the display device.
While existing video processing systems that use video windows may aid the user in browsing video content, they generally suffer a number of shortcomings.
First, they are generally difficult to control. Some video processing systems rely upon physical selection buttons, disposed on either a front panel of the video processing system itself, or a button-centric remote control. To select a video window, and to them perform operations on the window, for example, to resize the video window to obtain a larger view of the video content shown therein, the user may have to actuate specific physical buttons in a particular order. It may be difficult for a user to remember which buttons correspond to which video windows and which operations. Incorrect button presses may lead to undesired results and frustration. Other video processing systems rely upon a graphical user interface displayed on the screen of the display device to control the windows. The graphical user interface may be navigated via a button-centric remote control or a pointing device (e.g., a mouse). While such a graphical user interface may offer some advantages over physical buttons, it may still be difficult to operate. Often, navigating the graphical user interface is cumbersome. The user may need to repeatedly scroll through various selected video windows to select a desired one, or move an often-difficult to see cursor to a particular location to select a particular video window. Such operations may time consuming and frustrating.
Second, the number of different video steams many existing video processing systems can display simultaneously is inadequate for some applications. Existing video processing systems are typically limited to simultaneously displaying some modest fixed maximum number of different video streams, for example, 4, 6, 8, etc. different video streams. Yet a user may have access to a far greater number of different video streams. A user may desire to view and rapidly change focus between dozens or even hundreds of videos, for example, to navigate through a video library, categorize video content, or other purposes that involve “long tail” video content. However, this may be difficult given the limitations of existing video processing systems.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved systems that may address some, or all, of these shortcomings.